Welfare-states in various countries face numerous challenges nowadays to provide adequate social protection to their populations, given the social dynamics that characterize post-industrial societies, from ageing populations to the emergence of “atypical” forms of work. Prospects of net job losses due to automation and the need to reshape various sectors of our economies to meet the targets of carbon neutrality, which may represent the extinction of numerous job posts in polluting industries and an urgent need to requalify and reintegrate in the job market a great number of workers, represent a whole new range of additional challenges for Welfare-states in the areas of employment protection. In order to contribute to this discussion, we analyse in this article the proposition of public policy known as Job Guarantee, which consists in guaranteeing a job post in public service to anyone who voluntarily applies for it, serving both as a safety net for involuntary unemployment and to cover areas of activity not addressed by the market. The structure is as follows. We start by explaining, in more detail, what Job Guarantee is and what are the main arguments in favour of this policy option. Then, we briefly compare Job Guarantee with other policies (namely Participation Income and Basic Income), based on dimensions of analysis found in the literature review, so that we have a better understanding of the sort of questions raised by the implementation of such policies. We conclude with a brief analysis (based on policy evaluation reports and academic papers) of two programs that come close to the idea of Job Guarantee: the Argentinian program Plan Jefes and the French program Territoire Zéro Chômeur de Longue Durée (TZCLD). We hope with this analysis to stimulate reflection in the challenges we are facing and the trade-offs between the options to address them.

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